INNER HISTORY OF A ZEPPELIN RAID.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 253, 23 February 1917, Page 1 (Supplement)

INNER HISTORY OF A ZEPPELIN RAID.

The Zeppelin menace, like the sub marine danger, has apparently been scotched, writes Mr. John L. Balderston, in a graphic three-column London despatch for the M'Clure Newspaper Syndication the truth about the Zeppelin rauis.

No more remarkable details of tho British attitude towards these raid* and the new and effective anti-air-craft devices have ever been furnished by a neutral observer for a neutral country.

When the night air raids began It was said that the only protection lay in darkness, that no human ingenuity could meet and destroy great airships moving a mile a mnute through the ether, says Mr. Balderston. All the time experts were working, evolving new tactics for night air fighting, which were put into effect for the first time in September, and in the last four raids have brought down four Zeppelins on English soil. There is another parallel between the campaigns against submarines and Zeppelins. In each case the exact measures taken are shrouded in secrecy, and nothing may be described that might by any chance afford information to the enemy. Already improvements have been made in the anti-Zeppelin tactics carried out in the recent raids by aeroplanes, searchlights, guns on the ground, and other things, and the men of the Royal Flying Corps and the AntiAircraft Corps are praying that the

Germans may not realise that their game is un and keep their Ze-ppelins at home before an entire fleet of the great monsters is firad and destroyed. NEW SKY, TACTICS. The fascination a Zeppelin raid holds for an observer who knows something of the new tactics in the sky can scarcely be imagined. If his post of vantage is a good one, and the weather clear, he can see for a radius of thirty miles or so the mysterious lights above and below — signals from the patrolling aeroplanes to the guns, from the searchlights to the airmen, the flares dropped by groping Zeppelins and by imperilled aviators who have lost their bearings and must learn their whereabouts or risk a fatal smash.

The spectator who has his glasses —they must he good ones —trained not on the Zeppelin, but on the searchlight beams below and above the airship, sees shadows that seem like flies pass and re-pass through the light—they are aeroplanes closing in fo- the attack. Then amid the shell blossoms that wink and go out again like fireflies appear tiny moving lights that do not go out for several seconds, and in answer dots and dashes appear upon the clouds, thrown there by searchlights detailed for signal duty.

What has happened? The aeroplanes have signalled that they are ready to attack, have received orders to close in and deal the finishing blow —and no sooner has the answering signal appeared in the sky than the guns stop and give the airmen their chance. That inrtant of silence is the critical moment. THE BRIGHT FLAME.

If the attack succeeds, a bright flame appears almost immediately. quickly running up and down the framework of the Zeppelin, in a fewseconds enveloping a gas bag as long as the Lusitania in a conflagration which lights up the sky for fifty miles: and for fifty miles in every direction shouts and cheers go up from the watching multitudes, the noise rousing sleepers from their beds and bringing them tumbling into the streets in time to see the final plunge to destruction of the blazing comet. There are weapons used up there which the world lias never heard of. which were designed for the special purpose of destroying Zeppelins. The reason Lieutenant Robinson received the Victoria Cross for bagging the a ; rship which foil at Dudley in September was that he flew alongside his victim, exposed to machine-gun bullets, until he managed to explode the petrol tank of his enemy. It was this petrol explosion which caused the great burst of yellowlight which seemed to residents or London as if "the sun had exploded.'' The other Zeppelins, downed by shell fire and attack of another nature in the air, gave forth a less intehso reddish orance light, caused by the explosion of their gas bags and not their petrol tanks. Machine-guns of the type ordinarily carried by aeroplanes are useless in such warfare, and the incendiary missiles used by airmen in France to bring down anchored sausage balloons are not used against Zeppelins for the same reason that bombs have been discarded, because they must be thrown by hand and the eh;ince of i hitting an object moving as fast a:< an express train is infinitesimal.

EXfLOSIVE SHELLS

I have examined in France a contrivance fitted in an aeroplane which makes it possible to fire explosive shells from a cannon. This has hitherto been Impossible in the air, because the recoil from any ordinary gun would upset the aeroplane. That difficulty has now been overcome. To attempt further discussion of ways and means of bringing down Zeppelins is inadvisable, in view of the censorship on the subject, but it may be said that not only aeroplanes have been improved but also the guns and the shooting. Working out trajectories for gunnery against objects In the air which move up and down as well as forward proved a difficult problem, and early in the war much of the bad shooting, not only against Zeppelins, but against aeroplanes at the front, was due to lack of accurate calculation, which has now been remedied. In Zeppelin defence, co-ordination between the guns and the attacking aeroplanes w.is at first entirely absent, but now the scheme that works most often is first to cripple the Invader with shell fire from below, and then, before it can rise out of range and limp home again across the North Sea. finish it off by aeroplane attack. A Zeppelin once damaged by shell fire is often unable to carry out the swift manoeuvring which alone can protect it against the swarms of wasps which swiftly gather round it.

To anyone who witnessed the raids of 1915 and those of last year the most remarkable difference between the two was the change in the temper of the British people caused by the success of the new defensive measures. London was horrified then: now. although it sounds callous to say it, London regards Zeppelin raids as thundering good sport, and it is typical of the British sporting spirit that the intense bitterness against the members of the Zeppelin crews who murder women and children in their sleep has, in great measure, passed away. Ft is often argued now, and I think correctly, thai the visits' of the Zeppelins are proving an excellent tonic for the nerves of Englishmen. For the German mind to understand this would be impossible, since tne Ang-lo-Saxon sporting spirit is absent in the Fatherland, but the point will be clear at once to Americans. Here In London, for more than two years, the people have groped about the streets in darkness, most of their amusements and recreations hare been taken away from them, and of the excitement and thrill of war they have not had a particle—except for the Zeppelins. BETTER THAN FOOTBALL.

The on» desire of civilians who cannot go to the front Is to see something, feel something of the war, for the outstanding impression produced by the war on the overworked Briton at home is one of intense boredom. The Germans, by staging these wonderful shows above our heads In the night, have gratified the insistent craving of millions of people for something to pet excited about. When things came in the night and dropped trinitrotoluol and incendiary bombs, and invariably went away safely, the sporting element was absent from the affair.

What, however, are the horse rapes, football and cricket matches, which the average man used to attend in peace time to the fights he can watch now half a dozen times a year at least between St. George of England and evil, murderous dragons which now and then are brought flaming to death amid a pyroteehnlcal display dazzling beyond the imaginations of those who have not seen it? The old thrills will ever be absent now from the sports of peace. N'ero never put on anything in his circuses for his jaded public half so exciting as the destruction of a Zeppelin. The other night T met a New York friend in the Savoy Hotel. "What brings you over?" I hailed him. "I came over to see the Zepps," he said with enthusiasm. "Of course, I had to convince them I had some business to get a passport, but that was the real reason, and. say. I just got here in time to see that one come down at Cotter's Bar!

"I am giving up the world's baseball series for It, but do you know, after watching these shows over here I never can get excited over a baseball game again?" It would be too much to expect Germans to give up killing peopleand smashing houses because of the effect of their raids in heightening the cheerfulness and general morale of the British public, for no German can understand how "frightfulness" can have such a result. The ridiculous German bulletins concerning the damage done here by their :iir fleets cannot deceive those in authority in Berlin. The German espionage service is too good for that. There is probably no one in America who dees not know by this time that the German reports are entire fabrications, proving that the Germin commanders frequently do not know within fifty miles where they are: 1 will, however, add my testimony to that of many others and say that during the last eighteen months 1 have visited probably thirty localities named in the German bulletins as having been bombed, and have onlv twice seen any damage at all. and then far loss than the German accounts claimed. The real German motive in continuing the raids, in the opinion oT British military men, adds Mr. Balderstcn. is r.athcr the hope of mobll'sing for defensive purposes great numbers of men and guns in England which would otherwise be employed at the front. The German command doubtless is influenced also liv the inspiriting effect its fabulous bulletins about the damage done in England have on the mass of the German people—"Daily Express."